Ford Motor company has announced that starting next year, Fords will get access to Tesla’s supercharger network via an adapter sent to all owners, and later, new Fords will be made with the Tesla connector on them, allowing use without an adapter. This may mean the death of the “standard” CCS connector used by non-Tesla cars, and there is a strong case that it should. Whether it means the death of the J1772 slower charging plug is a different story.
Conventional wisdom is that J1772 and CCS are “industry standards” and thus the sure winners. They are also encoded into various laws creating subsidies for the installation of charging stations. But in spite of being a “standard” the Tesla connector is found on 2-3 times as many cars as CCS/J1772 because Tesla has, and continues to outsell all other carmakers combined. Is the “standard” the one chosen by the most companies, or the one chosen by the most people?
Tesla’s connector was proprietary, in that you initially needed a licence from Tesla to use it, while the other connectors were owned by a standards body. Early on, Tesla declared it would licence its patents for “free” but there were a few strings attached and almost nobody accepted the “free” offer. That changed recently as Tesla declared its connector to be entirely open, and people can use it without their permission. They renamed it the “NACS” or North American Charging Standard. EVgo has put Tesla plugs on their fast chargers for a few years, and an adapter to let J1772 cars charge from Tesla slow chargers has also been available for some time, but not much else. Aptera, which has yet to ship a car, has said it would use the Tesla connector.
Ford’s announcement marks a big change because Ford is the (distant) #2 EV vendor in North America, where these plugs are used. With #1 and #2 using NACS, and over 2/3rds of the cars on the road, it has a stronger claim to being the common standard. Everybody would prefer that there was just one charging plug — car owners don’t want to use adapters, and EV charging stations don’t want to have to have two or more plugs or adapters. For some time, there was competition between CCS and the Japanese CHAdeMO standard, but that ended when Nissan, the champion of CHAdeMO, released their Aria car with CCS. Even so, because the Nissan Leaf was the leading EV for a few years, many charging stations support CHAdeMO and may be legally required to do so.
On top of all this, the Tesla connector is generally considered to be superior. (While I am a frequent critic of Tesla’s FSD offering, their charging products deserve high praise.) A single small plug does both slow and fast charging up to 250kW, and the new version supports up to a megawatt. The CCS and CHAdeMO connectors are bulky monsters, much bigger and heavier than the NACS. All NACS cars support a data protocol to handle “plug and play” billing — though only through Tesla — while only a small number of CCS cars have started to support that. The CCS connector was the first to support 800v and 350kW, but only at a few stations, and that advantage is ending.
User Experience
Ford’s CEO indicated that Ford owners will all get the adapter for free, including current owners. They will be able to pay for charging at Tesla SC using the Ford app — they will not need to install the Tesla app, the way that CCS drivers must do when they visit one of the small number of Tesla stations which has a built in CCS adapter.
That’s good, but it’s not the Tesla “plug and play” experience where drivers just plug in and walk away without doing anything else. For that to happen, Ford cars would need to either speak Tesla’s protocol, or Tesla SC would need to speak the “plug and charge” protocol which most existing Fords do support. It is likely Tesla will do that (though there are apparently licence fees which might get in the way, and the protocol is fairly bulky and committee designed, like the CCS connector itself.)
Tesla’s plug and play experience is not just a smoother experience. A significant fraction of failures to charge at CCS stations relate to billing and authentication problems. For unknown reasons, charging vendors have had a hard time at getting that right. In an ideal world, all cars will, after setting up billing, be able to just plug in and walk away 100% of the time.
Charging Port
Current Ford cars have the charging port in front of the driver’s door. That’s a difficult place to reach with the very short cord on Tesla chargers, and it’s on the wrong side of the car, to boot. It is unknown if the adapter provided to Ford drivers will include a segment of cable to solve this problem. Even so, unless it’s a very long segment, Fords will use the charger to the left of the car, not the one to the right used by Teslas, which could cause Fords to block stalls for use by Teslas. There is a simple solution — Fords can be told to use the stalls on the right of a bank of chargers whiles Teslas keep to the left (facing the bank from the parking.) If need be this can even be enforced, only allowing Fords to authenticate at the rightmost available stall and directing them there in the app.
One presumes the new Ford models with NACS sockets will place them either at the front right or rear-left to match Tesla charger geometry.
The Supercharger Network
The connector is good, but the real attraction is Tesla’s supercharger network, which Ford drivers will get access to. It has more charging stalls than all the CCS networks (though this has recently evened up) and they are generally more reliable. Tesla (and Ford NACS) owners can purchase a low cost adapter which lets them use CCS stations, so NACS drivers have access to more than twice the charging stations, but they rarely use the CCS stations because they are less reliable — though they are sometimes cheaper or more conveniently located depending on where you are.
The surprising difference in bulk between the Tesla NACS (dark) and CCS (gray)
Tesla
The harsh reality is that a cross-country road trip in a Tesla today is a greatly superior experience to one in a CCS car. Enough so that buyers who care about road trips have to really hate Tesla to get anything else.
Access to this network, though, does not come with using the connector. Ford and Tesla have made a deal to allow that. Terms of the deal are not disclosed, but there is a risk to NACS Ford owners that if that deal should terminate, they might be left unable to use it. Tesla has said it plans to open up their charging stations to all comers, but at present has only committed to putting adapters at about 10% of their stalls in the next two years. (Ford drivers will get access to all stalls, not just 10%, via their adapter.)
In Europe, laws made Tesla abandon their connector for the European version of CCS, and some, but not all Tesla superchargers in Europe can be used by other cars. They all have the same connector, but not all will serve other cars.
For a company making a new EV, with the choice of putting NACS on it or CCS, the answer is obvious — as long as they can assure access to the Superchargers for their drivers permanently. What customer wouldn’t want to be able to charge at more than twice the stations, with higher reliability? Only stubbornness would support a choice of CCS. If the adapter that lets CCS cars charge at Tesla SC becomes available to all, and access to the SC network is available to all, that could change the equation, but NACS would still be the better choice for physical reasons.
One important issue for drivers of 800 volt CCS cars (Lucid, Taycan, e-Tron, Ioniq 5 and a few others) is that Tesla SC only do 400v at present. They have an 800v version now but it is yet to be deployed. Some of those 800v cars, notably the Lucid Air, include a low-capacity 50kW 400v to 800v converter and so can’t charge quickly at 400v stations (CCS or Tesla.) CCS stations were initially also only 400v but the 350kW stations and the newer 150kW stations do 800v. While those cars will still get value from Tesla stations, they will prefer the 800v stations where they can get them.
J1772 vs. NACS
The standards war has gone slightly differently for lower speed charging in homes, offices, parking lots and hotels. All Teslas come with a simple adapter that lets them use J1772. Tesla owners tend to have NACS chargers in their homes — they are actually cheaper to buy than J1772 and offer a button to end the charging session, but this is not true in public charging stations. Tesla did a program of giving out NACS slow chargers to a large number of hotels, so these are still popular in that area, but otherwise public stations use J1772, though the most frequent way it is used is to plug into an NACS car via the adapter. The J1772 connector is just a little bit bulkier than NACS — it’s nothing like the large heft difference between CCS and NACS. (CCS is effectively J1772 with two extra large pins added on the bottom.)
There is so much J1772 out there that it will stick around for a while. These stations are low cost and money to retrofit them will not be available. Fast charging stations are expensive, and if NACS becomes the new standard, they can adapt to adding such a cord or switching to it. Over time, the reverse adapter that lets a J1772 car use a NACS slow charging (level 2) station may become cheap and common, allowing new level 2 to use NACS just as the hotels do.
What if NACS doesn’t win?
To the rest of the EV industry, Tesla is the competition, or even the enemy. As such, they may resist a move to NACS as the primary connector. However, with the sign-on of Ford, it becomes less likely that Tesla will cave in and switch to CCS the way they did in Europe, absent a legal requirement. The use of NACS by Ford means Tesla has a solid claim on the billions in subsidies for the installation of “standard supporting” charging stations. It’s valid too — it seems strange to argue that what defines a standard is having the most corporations on board, rather than the most drivers. As long as Tesla remains open with the NACS, they should now have access to that money, though currently the rules also require charging stations to follow stupid, 20th century practices like having screens and credit card readers, and assuring 150kW to each stall rather than having more stalls with better sharing, which Tesla — with good reason — doesn’t currently do or want to do.
It’s also unclear just how eager Tesla will be to give up their big advantage in the charging network. Will they be willing to guarantee lifetime access to that network to those who buy a car with NACS, even if Tesla and the maker of that car get into a fight?
Following Ford, other vendors may also adopt NACS, others may not support the change. The presence of the $175 (or less) adapter that lets NACS cars use CCS — which is a highly recommended purchase for any Tesla from the last few years — means that NACS owners who care can use the CCS stations, and as such there is not as big an incentive for CCS station managers to add NACS plugs. (Pre-2021 Teslas and a few later ones need a retrofit controller card to use this adapter.) As such, companies like Electrify America, the largest operator of CCS stations, are taking a wait-and-see about adding NACS. If they were operated as businesses, they would not do this — the majority of cars use NACS and at present don’t have the adapter, so they are turning away their business. But EA was created to fulfill the Volkswagen dieselgate penalty, and does not run as a pure business. EA has reiterated that they support CCS because most manufacturers use it, which suggests they care more about manufacturers than drivers — but on the other hand because the Tesla drivers already have a network they prefer — even at a higher price — they feel less push to support them.
Because of the adapters, it won’t be a calamity if there continue to be two “standards.” That’s particularly true if the NACS adapter for CCS cars that Ford owners will all receive becomes available to any driver. In that case, any driver willing to spend a modest amount will be able to charge at any charger, providing Tesla is willing to let them connect. It will just be less convenient when using the adapter.
Dollarama Inc.’s food aisles may have expanded far beyond sweet treats or piles of gum by the checkout counter in recent years, but its chief executive maintains his company is “not in the grocery business,” even if it’s keeping an eye on the sector.
“It’s just one small part of our store,” Neil Rossy told analysts on a Wednesday call, where he was questioned about the company’s food merchandise and rivals playing in the same space.
“We will keep an eye on all retailers — like all retailers keep an eye on us — to make sure that we’re competitive and we understand what’s out there.”
Over the last decade and as consumers have more recently sought deals, Dollarama’s food merchandise has expanded to include bread and pantry staples like cereal, rice and pasta sold at prices on par or below supermarkets.
However, the competition in the discount segment of the market Dollarama operates in intensified recently when the country’s biggest grocery chain began piloting a new ultra-discount store.
The No Name stores being tested by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Windsor, St. Catharines and Brockville, Ont., are billed as 20 per cent cheaper than discount retail competitors including No Frills. The grocery giant is able to offer such cost savings by relying on a smaller store footprint, fewer chilled products and a hearty range of No Name merchandise.
Though Rossy brushed off notions that his company is a supermarket challenger, grocers aren’t off his radar.
“All retailers in Canada are realistic about the fact that everyone is everyone’s competition on any given item or category,” he said.
Rossy declined to reveal how much of the chain’s sales would overlap with Loblaw or the food category, arguing the vast variety of items Dollarama sells is its strength rather than its grocery products alone.
“What makes Dollarama Dollarama is a very wide assortment of different departments that somewhat represent the old five-and-dime local convenience store,” he said.
The breadth of Dollarama’s offerings helped carry the company to a second-quarter profit of $285.9 million, up from $245.8 million in the same quarter last year as its sales rose 7.4 per cent.
The retailer said Wednesday the profit amounted to $1.02 per diluted share for the 13-week period ended July 28, up from 86 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
The period the quarter covers includes the start of summer, when Rossy said the weather was “terrible.”
“The weather got slightly better towards the end of the summer and our sales certainly increased, but not enough to make up for the season’s horrible start,” he said.
Sales totalled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up from $1.46 billion in the same quarter last year.
Comparable store sales, a key metric for retailers, increased 4.7 per cent, while the average transaction was down2.2 per cent and traffic was up seven per cent, RBC analyst Irene Nattel pointed out.
She told investors in a note that the numbers reflect “solid demand as cautious consumers focus on core consumables and everyday essentials.”
Analysts have attributed such behaviour to interest rates that have been slow to drop and high prices of key consumer goods, which are weighing on household budgets.
To cope, many Canadians have spent more time seeking deals, trading down to more affordable brands and forgoing small luxuries they would treat themselves to in better economic times.
“When people feel squeezed, they tend to shy away from discretionary, focus on the basics,” Rossy said. “When people are feeling good about their wallet, they tend to be more lax about the basics and more willing to spend on discretionary.”
The current economic situation has drawn in not just the average Canadian looking to save a buck or two, but also wealthier consumers.
“When the entire economy is feeling slightly squeezed, we get more consumers who might not have to or want to shop at a Dollarama generally or who enjoy shopping at a Dollarama but have the luxury of not having to worry about the price in some other store that they happen to be standing in that has those goods,” Rossy said.
“Well, when times are tougher, they’ll consider the extra five minutes to go to the store next door.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
TORONTO – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered TD Bank Group to pay US$28 million for repeatedly sharing inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies.
The agency says TD has to pay US$7.76 million in total to tens of thousands of victims of its illegal actions, along with a US$20 million civil penalty.
It says TD shared information that contained systemic errors about credit card and bank deposit accounts to consumer reporting companies, which can include credit reports as well as screening reports for tenants and employees and other background checks.
CFPB director Rohit Chopra says in a statement that TD threatened the consumer reports of customers with fraudulent information then “barely lifted a finger to fix it,” and that regulators will need to “focus major attention” on TD Bank to change its course.
TD says in a statement it self-identified these issues and proactively worked to improve its practices, and that it is committed to delivering on its responsibilities to its customers.
The bank also faces scrutiny in the U.S. over its anti-money laundering program where it expects to pay more than US$3 billion in monetary penalties to resolve.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
After a long day at a work event in July, Kathryn Kozody was relieved when she spotted a car with a lit-up taxi sign.
She thought it was odd when the driver told her she’d have to pay her fare with a debit card. Still, a tired Kozody hopped in the car.
“I was like, ‘Fine, it’s kind of weird, but let’s go home,'” said Kozody, who lives in Calgary.
Nothing else seemed off — until the next day when she discovered that almost $2,000 was missing from her bank account. On top of that, her debit card had someone else’s name on it.
Kozody concluded that the taxi driver was a fraudster who, during the debit card transaction, recorded her PIN, stole her card and handed her back a fake.
“I started freaking out,” she said. “It’s terrifying when they have your debit card.”
It took Kozody about two weeks to get her money back from her bank, and she’s still rattled by the experience.
The day after taking what she thought was a ride in a taxi, Kathryn Kozody of Calgary found out someone had withdrawn almost $2,000 from her bank account. (James Young/CBC News)
“It really felt like an invasion of privacy and a violation to be a victim of this scam,” she said. “I really don’t want it to happen to anybody else.”
The taxi scam isn’t new; Toronto and Montreal have been seeing it for years. But the crime is becoming more widespread.
This summer, police in Calgary,Edmonton and at least five cities in southern Ontario, including Kingston and Ottawa, posted warnings online that they had received multiple reports of the scam.
Police and the Canadian Taxi Association say the fraudsters have a helping hand: with the click of a button, they can purchase a generic — but official looking — taxi roof sign on e-commerce sites like Amazon.
Edmonton Police posted this alert on Facebook in July, warning people about an ongoing taxi scam. The city’s police department says that it received about 10 reports of the scam that month. (Edmonton Police/Facebook )
“They do have a moral responsibility to at least sell the signs to individuals that are properly licensed,” said association president Marc André Way.
However, the U.S.-based company continues to sell the product to all customers.
“These lights are legal to sell in Canada,” Amazon told CBC News in an email.
‘Eye-popping’ numbers
The taxi scam has several variations but typically ends the same way: the victim pays with a debit card, then the scammer secretly steals it and hands the victim a similar but fake card. Shortly thereafter, money disappears from the victim’s account.
Ron Hansen, deputy chief of police in Sarnia, Ont., said his department received 12 reports of the scam in July, with one victim losing $9,900.
Toronto police report that since June 2023 the department has received 919 reports of the taxi scam, totalling $1.7 million in losses.
Jessica Chin King of Toronto said after a recent cab ride, she got a suspicious activity alert from her bank. She learned $600 had been withdrawn from her account. (Craig Chivers/CBC)
The numbers are “eye-popping,” said Toronto police detective David Coffey.
“When they do get a victim, they are quick to go right into the bank accounts. They’re quick to empty them out.”
Jessica Chin King of Toronto said just 15 minutes after a recent cab ride, she got a suspicious activity alert from her bank. Turns out, $600 had been withdrawn from her account.
“I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that just happened.’ I was in shock,” said Chin King, whose bank later reimbursed the cash.
She said she too was fooled by the taxi sign atop the car.
“I was in the car with somebody who wasn’t a taxi driver. Anything could have happened,” she said. “I was thankful that it was only my bank [account] that was compromised.”
Taxi light for $35 on Amazon
CBC News bought a taxi sign from Amazon for $35. It has a magnetic strip on the bottom, so it easily sticks to the top of a car.
To power the light, an attached wire can be run through the driver’s window and plugged into the car’s auxiliary power outlet, also known as the cigarette lighter outlet.
The taxi association says licensed taxi drivers typically get their roof signs from speciality suppliers, and they are hardwired to the car — not powered via the cigarette lighter.
“When you see that … it’s obvious that it’s not a legitimate taxi,” said Way, the association president.
“This is not a safe, practical way to distribute the trusted ‘Taxi’ signs,” he wrote.
CBC News ordered this $35 taxi sign on Amazon. The attached wire can be run through the driver’s window and plugged into the car’s auxiliary power outlet, while the lights for licensed drivers are hardwired into the vehicle. (Sophia Harris/CBC News)
But Amazon told Way — and CBC News — the signs will remain on its site, because the company isn’t breaking any rules.
“It’s going to be quite difficult, I think, for anyone to stop Amazon from selling a product that is perfectly legal to sell,” said Toronto criminal lawyer, Daniel Goldbloom. “It’s true that these taxi signs can be used to commit scams, but kitchen knives can be used to commit murder — and we don’t stop retailers from selling those.”
But Way isn’t giving up hope.
He says the taxi association also plans to ask other online retailers, such as Temu and eBay, to stop selling the taxi signs and will lobby provincial governments for legislation that regulates the sale of the product.
However, Coffey said he believes the best way to fight the taxi scam is to educate people about it.
“Never, never give another person control of your debit card,” the detective said.
Victims Chin King and Kozody also want to spread the word.
“The more people know, the less likely it is to happen again to somebody else,” Kozody said.
